4 Compelling 'Game of Thrones' Fan Theories You Should Know

Game of Thrones comes back to HBO this Sunday with its superfans in uncharted territory, as season 6 will forge ahead of the narrative currently laid out in the book series A Song of Ice and Fire. No more can your nerdy roommates lord over you the fact that they know what's going to happen (basically).

Before the new season begins, catch up on some of our favorites from among these imaginative theories.

The maesters plot to eradicate magic and kill off the Targaryens

The maesters of the Citadel serve as scholars, scientists, and doctors for the noble houses of Westeros. They teach young nobles to read and do arithmetic. They study the weather and document observations of the night sky. They perform surgeries, mix medicines, keep historical records, and train messenger ravens. They represent the scientific method at work in a world where dragons and White Walkers and other forms of magic were once common, and appear to be coming back.

Many have theorized that the archmaesters who run the Citadel—where maesters are trained—want to eradicate magic throughout their world to create a more logic-based and peaceful society. Makes sense. Where this delves into conspiratorial territory is the suggestions that the maesters were in on killing off the Targaryens, given the former rulers' unnatural power to tame and control dragons and tendency to subject the realm to constant bloodshed.

There is other textual evidence to support this theory. In the fourth book, A Feast for Crows, a magic-studying archmaester named Marwyn suggests to Samwell Tarly that the maesters could have had a hand in killing off the last dragons and ousting the Targaryens from power.

Who do you think killed all the dragons the last time around? Gallant dragonslayers armed with swords? The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less for dragons. Ask yourself why Aemon Targaryen was allowed to waste his life upon the Wall, when by rights he should have been raised to archmaester. His blood was why. He could not be trusted. - Archmaester Marwyn, A Feast for Crows

Jon, Tyrion, and Varys are Targaryens

If you read or watch videos about Game of Thrones fan theories, then by now you've no doubt stumbled upon the most-discussed of them all: R+L=J, the suggestion that Jon Snow is not Ned Stark's bastard but the son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen. The evidence is pretty convincing, we have to say. We could lay it all out here, but recommend watching a video like this one instead.

But there could be other secret Targaryens. It has been proposed that Tyrion, rather than being the spawn of Tywin and Joanna Lannister, is the illegitimate child of Joanna and the Mad King Aerys II, who might have forced himself on her while her husband Tywin was serving as Hand. (This is further supported by descriptions in The World of Ice & Fire that say King Aerys took "unwonted liberties with Lady Joanna's person during her bedding ceremony, to Tywin's displeasure.")

What else? Tywin and the Mad King had a rapidly disintegrating relationship in the years leading up to Robert's Rebellion, and such an act by King Aerys could explain some of Tywin's wrath. Tywin refuses Tyrion the right to rule Casterly Rock, and says that Tyrion is not his son on multiple occasions, perhaps most convincingly when he says in A Storm of Swords, "Men's laws give you the right to bear my name and display my colors, since I cannot prove that you are not mine." The reader tends to interpret this at Tywin's anger because his wife died while giving birth to Tyrion, but maybe he means it in a more literal sense.

Varys is also a suspected Targaryan, owing to his unclear past and rapid rise to a prominent position within the small council of King Aerys. Perhaps he was keeping tabs on Daenerys and Viserys not to help Robert Baratheon track them, but to protect them.

The clincher here comes at the end of A Dance with Dragons, the fifth book. With the Lannisters in disarray, it is Kevan Lannister, Tywin's brother, who starts picking up the pieces and ruling effectively. He reconciles the Lannisters' relationship with the Tyrells and the Faith. Right when Kevan is about to right the ship, Varys puts a crossbow bolt in his gut, and says:

This pains me, my lord. You do not deserve to die alone on such a cold dark night. There are many like you, good men in service to bad causes... but you were threatening to undo all the queen's good work, to reconcile Highgarden and Casterly Rock, to bind the Faith to your little king, unite the Seven Kingdoms under Tommen's rule. - Varys, A Dance with Dragons

Maybe Varys is the sole reasonable person in Westeros who's looking out for the long-term health of the Realm rather than his own ambitions. Or maybe he's just a badass secret Targaryen.

Game of Thrones is not fantasy—it's post-apocalyptic science fiction

You could argue the differences and similarities of fantasy and sci-fi until the world ends or Daenerys makes it to Westeros, whichever comes first. But the generally accepted distinction is this: Fantasy takes place in a world of impossibilities, while science fiction takes place in a world of theoretical possibilities. In that light it's interesting to consider the idea by Preston Jacobs, an avid Game of Thrones theorist, that the story could turn out to be a post-apocalyptic science fiction work rather than fantasy—and that all the seemingly magical things happening in Game of Thrones have a quasi-scientific explanation.

Jacobs came by his theory by comparing A Song of Ice and Fire to George R.R. Martin's lesser-known works of science fiction. In many of these sci-fi stories, the characters are part of a civilization that previously had wondrous technologies like interstellar space travel and bioengineering. But a war or other disaster brought the society crumbling down to a shadow of its former glory.

This sounds a little like the Valyrians in Game of Thrones, a race of people in Essos who could forge magnificent weapons, construct nigh-impenetrable architecture, and, of course, tame dragons. Perhaps they were simply advanced, not magical, and their technology—long forgotten after the cataclysmic "Doom" all but wiped out their race—is now shrouded in myth.

Jacobs suggests that even before the Valyrians there could have been a technologically advanced society similar to our own that wiped itself out in nuclear war, plunging the world into a years-long nuclear winter, now known in the story as The Long Night. The Wall could remain standing thanks not to magic powers, but to some unseen cooling contraption. The wargs and skinchangers and White Walkers and other mystical creatures could be the result of bioengineering and gene manipulation, technologies used to breed strange creatures and even raise the dead in Martin's sci-fi stories.

The Faceless Men caused the Doom of Valyria, and they want to melt the Wall and kill everyone

This theory is based on scant information in the books about dragon eggs, who has them, and what they can be used for. We know, for example, that Aegon V destroyed the castle of Summerhall and killed many people by attempting to hatch dragon eggs, which could be an indication that dragon eggs had something to do with the Doom that engulfed Valyria in fire.

The Faceless Men—assassin-priests Arya has started training with in Season 5 who serve the Many-Faced God of Death—come into the picture because their order has its origins in Valyria before the Doom. Slaves of Valyria began praying for death as an escape from the brutal working conditions in volcanic mines. Though they prayed to many different gods, the first Faceless Man concluded that the slaves were actually praying to the same god, a god of death with many faces. This god began granting death, first to the slaves, and then ultimately to their masters. It has therefore been theorized that the first Faceless Men used dragon eggs to cause the Doom and wipe out the Valyrians.

We also know that Euron "Crow's Eye" Greyjoy, brother to Balon Greyjoy who ruled the Iron Islands, claims that he obtained a dragon egg in his travels but tossed it into the sea during a rage. As Ryan Harkness points out for Uproxx, it is possible that Euron did not get rid of the egg but instead used it as a form of payment to the Faceless Men—payment for the death of Balon, who falls from a high bridge in the Iron Islands just before Euron arrives and declares himself the new king.

If the Faceless Men have a dragon egg, we must ask what they plan to do with it. Here we make the large, speculative leap to the possibility that they want to melt the Wall, unleashing the White Walkers on Westeros and killing basically everyone. They are priests of death, after all.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Popular Mechanics participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.